Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Death-Dealing "Divinity" in the White House

“I could be well moved, if I were as you
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
They are all fire, and every one doth shine.
But there's one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds onto his rank,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he....”

Shakespeare placed those words
in the mouth of Julius Caesar as the dictator arrogantly dismissed a plea to
pardon Publius Cimber, who had been exiled from Rome. The merits of that
request mattered not at all; the only issue, where Caesar was concerned, was
his primacy and the need to display resolution in all things, to “show it, even
in this: That I was constant Cimber should be banished, and constant do remain
to keep him so.”

Caesar, in his
own view, wasn't a servant of Rome; he was Rome. He wasn't subordinate
to the law; the law was an emanation of his sovereign will. He was
self-enraptured, self-fixated, megalomaniacal – in a word, presidential.

Barack Obama rarely indulges in public displays of dictatorial
arrogance. He leaves it to underlings like Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, FBI Director
Robert Mueller, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In testimony before
separate congressional committees on the same day (March 7), Panetta and
Mueller made clear the president’s view that his power to kill people is not
subject to congressional checks or legal restraints of any kind.

The president has not been granted the authority to order
the assassination of anyone, of course. Doing so is (in descending order of seriousness)
an act of criminal homicide and an impeachable offense. Or at least it would be
considered as much by anybody other than those who subscribe to the perverse
idea that the president is a figure who transcends the law, who “unassailable
holds onto his rank,” irrespective of the moral nature of his actions.

This was the essence of Eric Holder’s detestable claim that a
presidential kill order, made in secret on the recommendation of an anonymous, unaccountable panel of underlings, satisfies the requirement of “due process.” That vile
notion was reiterated by Senate
Majority Leader Reid in a March 11 CNN interview.

“No I don’t – but I do know this – the American citizens who
were killed overseas were terrorists, and if anybody in the world deserved to
be killed, those three did,” Reid said, his eyes bright with the murderous fanaticism
that burns away all critical thought. After all, if Reid retained the capacity
for skepticism he would wonder if 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulraham Al-Awlaki
really “deserved” to be murdered while enjoying a barbecue at the home of a
friend.

Evangelist for the Leader Principle: Harry Reid.

Crowley, to her credit, persisted:

“Are you slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the United
States President – whoever it may be – can decide that this or that U.S.
citizen living abroad is a threat to U.S. security, and kill them?”

“Well, I don’t know what the Attorney General meant by the
term – I’d have to study it,” Reid said in a moment of equivocation before the
cult conditioning re-asserted itself. “But I think the process is in place, I
think it is one … we can live with….”

“Do you think the president should be able to make that
decision … without going to court, without going to you all, without anything?”
Crowley asked in one last attempt extract a clear answer from Reid.

“There is a war going on,” Reid recited, his face drawn
into a sanctimonious smirk. “There is no question about that. He is the
Commander-in-Chief, and there have been guidelines set. If he follows those, I
think he should be able to do it."

At least some of Obama’s Republican critics are genuinely
horrified by these assertions of unrestricted presidential power; some have
even called for Obama’s impeachment, which would be an entirely appropriate
course of action.

It should be acknowledged, however, that with the honorable
exception of Ron Paul (and perhaps Rep. Walter Jones), no congressional
Republican who served during George W. Bush’s administration has standing to
criticize Obama’s dictatorial abuses of power. The same is true of the
GOP-aligned conservative punditocracy, particularly its talk radio auxiliary. The
neo-totalitarian tendencies that took root during the reign of Bush the Dumber
were lavishly fertilized by the diaper filling emitted relentlessly by the
likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin and the glossy
herd-poisoners at Fox “News.” They cultivated the seeds from which blossomed
Obama’s nettlesome regime.

Bless me, Dear Leader: A True Believer prays to Obama.

Harry Reid’s nauseating praise
for presidential despotism is the same paean to Leader-worship sung by Bush’s
chorus pitched in a slightly different key. In fact, some of Bush’s more
passionate adherents considered him to be an adjunct member of the Trinity – a delusion
he occasionally seemed to share.

During a campaign
stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania prior to the 2004 election, Bush told the
audience: ''I trust God speaks through me.” Some of Bush’s acolytes regarded
that self-description to be too modest.

"I've voted
Republican from the very first time I could vote,'' Gary Walby, a retired
jeweler from Destin, Florida, during a campaign appearance. ''And I also want
to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White
House.” A New York Times Magazine
account of that exchange records: “Bush simply said 'thank you' as a wave of
raucous applause rose from the assembled.”

Patient and steady with all he
must bear, Ready to meet every challenge with care, Easy in manner, yet solid as steel, Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.Isn't afraid to propose what is bold, Doesn't conform to the usual mould, Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do, Never backs down when he sees what is true, Tells it all straight, and means it all too. Going forward and knowing he's right, Even when doubted for why he would fight, Over and over he makes his case clear, Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear. Growing in strength he won't be unnerved, Ever assuring he'll stand by his word. Wanting the world to join his firm stand, Bracing for war, but praying for peace,Using his power so evil will cease,So much a leader and worthy of trust,Here stands a man who will do what he must.

The instrument has yet to be invented that can
measure the infinitesimal odds that this poem reflects the spontaneous
admiration of a private author, either American or Pakistani. Given the Bush
regime's documented efforts, working through the Rendon Group, the Lincoln Group, and similar propaganda mills, to seed “positive” storiesin both the domestic and international media,
it's a near-certainty that this hymn to Bush the Magnificent was extruded by an
employee of, or contractor for, his regime.

There is no ambiguity about the
origins and intentions of “The Road We’ve Traveled,” an Obama administration
campaign film produced by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim and narrated
by Tom Hanks.

Guggenheim is the Leni Reifenstahl of the Obama
administration – a talented artist entirely devoted to the cult of the Dear
Leader. His
17-minute pseudo-documentary promises to be a work of unalloyed
Leader-worship in which Obama is wreathed in sanctity and his
every deed is depicted in a heroic light. The clinching evidence of Obama's divinity, as portrayed in his work of cinematic worship, was the supposed courage he displayed in ordering the summary execution of Osama bin Laden, which was a precursor to the assassination of three U.S. citizens.

When CNN host Piers Morgan asked the filmmaker, “What
are the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?” Guggenheim replied: “The
negative for me was that there were too many accomplishments.” The only other
“negatives” he could perceive resulted from what he called the “toxic
environment” created by those who dare oppose the Dear Leader’s infallible will
and transcendently noble purposes.

The Versailles court of Louis XIV, France’s self-described
“Sun King,” included hundreds of sycophants and lickspittles who shamelessly
sought his favor. In his book The Great
Upheaval, historian Jay Winik has described how some of them would literally fight each other for
the privilege of "presenting the chair for his daily `natural functions'.”

Guggenheim is the sort of person
who would fight for the privilege of hauling the king’s intestinal residue,
which – he would insist – emits the enchanting aroma of fresh-cut flowers.

Louis XIV’s famous self-description was “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the state”). His final pre-Revolution
successor, Louis XVI, offered a similar summation of his view of the law: “C’est legal parce que je le veux” (“It’s
legal because I will it”). Royal absolutism of this kind, after being refined
in the crucible of revolution, was eventually remolded into the basic tenets of
totalitarianism – a system, Lenin said, that rested on “Power without limit,
resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by
rules.”

Lenin would recognize in value of Holder’s sophistical
distinction between “due process” and “judicial process” an effort to abolish any remaining legal limits on the lethal power of the State, as incarnated in the Dear Leader. He would admire the
audacity displayed by the Obama administration (as well as its predecessor) in
asserting the unlimited power of the executive to kill, torture, and imprison
people at whim. He would covet the instruments of mass annihilation wielded by
the executive branch, and its equally destructive apparatus of mass indoctrination.
And he might even spare a moment of incredulous pity for a population that is
ruled by such a system while clinging to the illusion of freedom.

18 comments:

Jerryskids
said...

I can't even wrap my mind around this. I remember the ridicule Nixon faced when he said "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal" - and he was defending burglary. Now we have a President defending his power to murder people and still we aren't gathering the torches and pitchforks. What will it take or is there nothing the American people won't swallow?

When you peruse the wastelands of TV infotainment you realize it's a constant drive-by assault upon us of lies and obfuscations. I've read time and again, from people who like Will actually make sense, that one of the best things you can do is turn off the so-called news shows... or TV completely, and THEN you'll begin the process of setting yourself free. There really is a Matrix out there and YOU are "the ONE" who can set yourself free from it. If only you want to.

I wonder if the Founding Fathers made a mistake in establishing the office of the President?

I think the Founding Fathers made a mistake in fighting the Revolution, period. Those who gave their lives for the cause certainly did so in vain, as it has turned out.

William, my only quarrel with your article is its title. It ascribes too much to Barack Obama the person. He, like his immediate predecessor, is an empty suite, a sock puppet, a marionette, a "beard" for the real powers behind the scenes. It would not have mattered one wit who was president on September 11, 2001. Whoever happened to be sitting on the Toy Throne on that day, whether George W. Bush, Algore, Ralph Nader, or a plastic department store dummy (the most preferable option) would have been conscripted into escalating the illegal usurpation of power by the executive figurehead and would have been forced to play the role of "The Great Decider." Similarly, if John McInsane had won the 2008 election, he would be the subject of your article, the only difference being the name replacement.

The only way to put an end to this madness is to de-legitimize the entire rotten Establishment by refusing to allow it to continue to govern us. When that happens, the presidency of the United States will be as irrelevant and powerless as the presidency of the Paris Hilton Fan Club.

If McInsane (heh) was in the White House the press would be baying for heads to roll due to the unconstitutional usurpations of the administration. Maybe nothing would come of it but at least they would be (sorta) doing their jobs. The liberty minded blogosphere would not be the only ones who notice these (treasonous) shenanigans. But, yeah, you are right McCain is just as power mad as Odumbo. And probably crazier due to his stay at the Hanoi Hilton.

Good grief. Bush has been gone for over three years, do you think Grigg could get a life and stick to the issue at hand? a lot of what Bush did was bad, too. Get over it.

Obama is out of control, and the very people who should be reining him in refuse to do so, in fact they see nothing wrong with it. That is the frightening issue here, and the one which needs to be addressed.

I have said repeatedly in other venues that McCain is as diseased a creature as Obama, with the same agenda, but he is no longer the issue here either. This should not be a "Republicans are as bad as the Democrats" cry from the minarets (even though it is true), it should be a demand from every American that Obama be impeached for his traitorous refusal to act Constitutionally.

Ahh, Harry Reid, Nevada's finest.I have not watched tee vee since the analog signal went dead well over a year ago. (Yeah, I might pay some cable or satellite company for the sludge waste they sell).But I digress, Harry Reid was prominent then (analog tee vee dayz) as he seemingly is today. He epitomizes what America has devolved into. A highly scrubbed, disinfected, dresssed up version of Las Vegas organized crime. How else can we rationalize the decadent criminality witnessed here?

When the people have no protection under the law from government then the government has no protection from the people and however they should choose to deal with the illegal transgressions against them. This is made possible by God's gift of Free Will and the inherent right of free people to exercise it as they deem necessary to defend their Liberty.

Jerryskids asked, "What will it take or is there nothing the American people won't swallow?"

Lots of People (some anyway) are asking this question too. IMHO, there is nothing the American people won't swallow. Fluoride in combination with willful denial really works wonders.

While reading a lot of comment sections these days I'm often reminded of a quote from an infamous Russian describing the gulag, the People didn't get "it" until they felt a military boot on their big fat bottom kicking them into the gates of the gulag.

Bob asked, "You think we would have been better off remaining under British rule?"

There are some articles addressing this question, it has nothing to do with being "pro-British".

I forget which one appealed to me the most, so here's a good start if you're interested in seeking understanding:

In answer your first question, we probably wouldn't have been any WORSE off in the long run, considering that it didn't take long for a rebirth of aristocratic plutocracy to occur here on this side of the Big Pond. Less than one hundred years after its birth, America had begun furiously shedding its founding ideals, and at a breakneck pace. By the outbreak of World War I (which, like its successor twenty-odd years later, was fought by America largely for the benefit of our British "cousins"), America was barely distinguishable, in imperial terms, from the "Mother Nation." Were it otherwise, wouldn't we --assuming that a "government by the People, of the People, and for the People" actually ruled-- not only NOT have come to Britain's aid, but would have gone all out to remain neutral, to avoid the "foreign entanglement" of a European war that George Washington warned us about? That our ruling kleptoligarchy, a Rothschild subsidiary like the British government, did exactly the opposite proves just what a lost cause the ideals of the American Revolution ultimately turned out to be. The only difference is that at the turn of the last century, the American ruling kleptoligarchy was a British vassal, whereas by the end of the century the roles had reversed. Either way, the Constitutional Republic of the American Founders was by then long dead, the American people, by this time transformed into the Amoricon sheeple, having eagerly helped it die a slow and painful death.

In answer to your second question, no, most definitely and certainly not. Anarcho-capitalism is hardly reconcilable with monarchy.

Your writing always impresses me a great deal. I am a fan. If you haven't done so, would you consider putting together some recommended reading lists for those who want to be influenced by some of your influences?